“Ain’t my mess,” I reply.
She studies me a beat longer. Honey knows brotherhood. Knows loyalty. Knows how easy it is for men to circle the wagons around one of their own even when he’s dead wrong.
“I don’t want to hear about how he’s trying,” she says flatly. “Or how hard it is. Or how brotherhood means I should understand. How I need to accept the past and get over it like he only fucked up once. I don’t need to hear it, none of it.”
I nod once. “Wouldn’t say it.” And I wouldn’t. Because Smoke did her wrong. More than once. More than twice. And not just because he didn’t keep his dick in his pants. He crossed her repeatedly. The minute things feel too comfortable, he sabotages it all. It’s like he can’t help himself.
Honey ain’t the type to slam doors for nothing. If she’s done, she’s done because she’s bled enough.
I watch Honey a second longer. The way her chest rises and falls. The way her fingers flex like she wants to throw something. The way there’s still heat there—under the anger. That’s the thing.
Love and hate aren’t opposites like people think.
They are like living in a duplex. Separate but attached. It’s hard to hate someone if you don’t have love or care. Even to hate a stranger is about them crossing a line of some sort, to cross a line means someone cared enough to draw the boundary in the first place. You can’t hate if you don’t care. Period.
I’ve seen Smoke fight men with less fire than he uses when he fights her. And Honey? She doesn’t back down from anybody. Not customers. Not club whores. Not men twice her size. And definitely not him.
There’s a line between love, hate, passion, and pain so thin you can cut yourself on it.
I know that now. Because when I think about Danae, none of that feels like confusion. It feels like gravity. She holds me down when life wants to throw me around. She steadies me when the kind of man I am wants to run amuck.
I crouch back down beside my bike and tighten the bolt on the rear fender, but my mind’s already drifting west.
Arkansas.
Her laugh in the kitchen. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she’s tired. The way she looks at her grandpa like he’s both her anchor and her responsibility.
I miss her. Not in a passing way. In a bone-deep, restless way.
The open road’s been calling me for days. That itch under my skin that says pack a bag, throw a leg over the bike, and go until the horizon changes color.
But this time it ain’t about running. It’s about moving toward something. One direction has my sole focus now.
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. Country Boy. I grin before I even answer. Sometimes I swear that man has a damn radar for when to call without bothering me.
“Yeah.”
“Wrath wants a transport,” he states without preamble. “Need you to head out, collect the cash.”
I lean back against the lift and look up at the ceiling like maybe the universe finally decided to cut me a break. Of all the people to call and all the places to go, this will never work out in my favor so well again.
“When?”
“Tomorrow night is the meet.”
A slow smile spreads across my face. “You got it, Pres.”
“Thought you’d say that,” he chuckles. “You good to roll?”
“Already halfway gone.”
When I hang up, I catch Smoke watching me from the doorway of the office.
“What’s that look?” he asks.
“Transport,” I share. “Wrath wants cash moved.”
Smoke’s shoulders straighten like someone just plugged him into an outlet.
